Addendum: These recommendations were the topic of some discussion at the Sleep Meeting this year. Like many of my colleagues, I take exception to the recommendation on the infographic that 7-8 hours of sleep may be adequate for some older children and teenagers. Almost all children on that age group need more than 8 hours of sleep or more.
I get asked all the time, “Is my child getting enough sleep? How much sleep do kids need?”. There are a couple of ways to answer this question. Here’s one way of answering the question.
- Does your child wake up in the morning without complaint?
- Does she pay attention in school without difficulty?
- Does she stay awake on short car trips around town?
If the answer to all of these questions is yes in a school age or older child, the answer is likely yes. However, sleep quality matters too— your child could be getting twelve hours of sleep a night and still wake up exhausted if he has a sleep disorder like obstructive sleep apnea, or if the TV is on in her room all night long. It can be harder to judge in younger children who nap routinely. That is why it is important to know what the normal range of sleep duration is by age.
The National Sleep Foundation updated the guidelines for how much sleep people of varies ages should sleep. What’s so interesting about this is that the range is pretty wide, especially in infants and young children. My mother was terrified that there was something wrong with me when I was sleeping 20 hours a day as an infant; other babies may sleep for 12 hours a day and their parents are miserable, because I guarantee that those hours are not occurring in a row.
Here is a summary of the new recommendations, with the recent updates noted:
- Newborns (0-3 months ): Sleep range narrowed to 14-17 hours each day (previously it was 12-18)
- Infants (4-11 months): Sleep range widened two hours to 12-15 hours (previously it was 14-15)
- Toddlers (1-2 years): Sleep range widened by one hour to 11-14 hours (previously it was 12-14)
- Preschoolers (3-5): Sleep range widened by one hour to 10-13 hours (previously it was 11-13)
- School age children (6-13): Sleep range widened by one hour to 9-11 hours (previously it was 10-11)
- Teenagers (14-17): Sleep range widened by one hour to 8-10 hours (previously it was 8.5-9.5)
- Younger adults (18-25): Sleep range is 7-9 hours (new age category)
- Adults (26-64): Sleep range did not change and remains 7-9 hours
- Older adults (65+): Sleep range is 7-8 hours (new age category)
And here is a useful infographic from the NSF (link above):
Need advice getting more sleep? Here are posts on how you can:
- Get 30 more minutes of sleep per night
- Address early morning awakenings in your child
- Effectively sleep train your children
- Help teenagers get more sleep by advocating for later school start times
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Greetings! Thanks for all this really helpful information. My kids are 6 and 3 (or they will be in two months), and I’ve used most of the different coaching strategies you suggest for one or the other (or both!) over the years. I feel good about their sleep patterns, and their abilities to self-soothe – although they both try to push at the edges at bedtime some nights with requests that constitute ‘ delay tactics’ – but we’re working them out.
My question has to do with whether you offer advice on when to end a preschooler’s afternoon nap. I think we may be on the cusp of that moment, given that my son (almost 3) often takes up to an hour to fall asleep (alone, quietly in his room) after I put him to bed between 7:15 and 7:45. He tends to wake between 6/6:30 am, and occasionally calls me through the night once, but largely sleeps through the night. Our pattern is for him to nap starting between 1:30-2:30, and he’ll sleep on his own for 90min or sometimes 2+ hours, but we wake him up by 4:00 to try not to run too close to bedtime. And on the (rare) days when a nap gets skipped, he is an ANGRY BEAR by 3:30 or 4:00. That said, he has started resisting going down for nap – at least with me, on the weekends – and also telling me at bedtime that he is “NOT tired!!”. 😉 It is hard for me to distinguish between a behavioral phase (he is a bit more attached to me, of late), and a physiological readiness to just stop napping. My daughter napped quite comfortably till she was 5, and still occasionally will sleep during her quiet rest time for 45 min or so.
In any case, you may have advice elsewhere on your site that i haven’t come across – there is clearly a wealth of advice here and there in your comment threads, but I was finding it hard to wade through. Is there anywhere you can point me in terms of reading / resources for assessing readiness to end naps?
Hi Heather. Sorry for the delay in answering. I think you are getting there with your son. It is always a little painful to give up the nap, for many reasons. I’m working on some nap research for a later post so I will have more info for you soon. I think that you could either a) try a later bedtime for your son if you want to give up the nap, closer to the time when he is actually falling asleep or b) give up the nap altogether or c) wait a little, in which case he may just give it up on his own. True story– my older son napped until age 4.5, and my younger son gave up napping at age 3 in retaliation when we took away his binky. We had one blissful month where they had simultaneous naps at ages 4 and 1, but it DID NOT LAST.